The best of enemies
7:40:08 PM Fri 5 May, 2006
Jim Main
AFL Record
Jim Main looks at AFL rivalries - past and present.
There have been few more focused football rivalries than the one that existed between the Collingwood and Fitzroy clubs for decades following the formation of the Victorian Football League for the 1897 season.
Both clubs were based in working-class suburbs but, more than that, they were separated by a shopping strip down which cable cars carried people from one end to the other.
Smith Street divided more than the citizens. To be born and bred on the eastern side meant you were a Magpie for life. The other side fostered intense loyalty to the Maroons.
On wintry Friday nights, the youthful "pushes" (gangs) waged war, especially on the eve of Collingwood-Fitzroy clashes. After all, even their respective grounds were within a rolling brawl of each other, separated only by a railway line and a coal yard.
Fitzroy dominated the early clashes between the two but, following World War I, the Magpies found another rival in Richmond. Again, there was little between the Collingwood and Richmond suburbs geographically, as Punt Road went from Tigerland almost to Collingwood's door at Victoria Park. One side of Victoria Parade was Richmond, and the other Collingwood.
However, much more than inter-suburban jealousies sparked the initial animosity between these two clubs.
Richmond, which won admittance to the VFL in 1908, at first was considered the poor neighbour – until the Tigers enlisted the services of one of the Magpies' greatest identities, Dan Minogue.
A big, burly miner from Bendigo, Minogue had captained the Magpies until serving overseas during the war but, on his return, jolted the Collingwood club to its foundations when he asked for a clearance to Richmond.
Many of Minogue's Collingwood detractors suggested he had been offered more money to play with the Tigers but, in reality, he felt that the Magpies had unfairly treated teammate and close friend Jim Sadler.
Richmond's Hugh James had served with Minogue in the army but, although the former Collingwood captain applied to join the Tigers, the Magpies blocked the move for a year.
Then, when Collingwood finally relented before the start of the 1920 season, the Magpie hierarchy turned Minogue's photograph to the wall.
To make matters more galling for Collingwood, Minogue, as Richmond captain-coach, led the Tigers to a 17-point win over the Magpies in that year's Grand Final.
The Collingwood-Richmond rivalry might have lost some of its intensity over recent years, but old-time supporters of both clubs still harbour grudges.
Richmond legend Jack Dyer used to boast of how any win over Collingwood was worth two over any other club and, to describe his intense dislike of the Magpies, once said he would never even have a black and white television.
Richmond and Collingwood fought many battles as two of the power teams of the 1930s and, in a far more recent era, locked horns in one of the most extraordinary recruiting feuds in football history.
Full-forward Brian Taylor went from the Tigers to the Magpies, David Cloke went from Richmond to Collingwood and back to Richmond, Phillip Walsh went from the Magpies to the Tigers and several others went from one end of Punt Road to the other as the two clubs waged war on each other.
The current rivalry might not be intense, but it flares now and then and there always is that undercurrent of mutual dislike.
....
Instead, new rivalries developed, with Carlton and Richmond sharing what could only be described as a mutual dislike of each other in the late 1970s and early '80s.
Both clubs were hell-bent on success and were bitter rivals in marketing, membership and recruiting. They shared the glory, with the Blues winning the 1972, 1979 and 1981-82 flags and the Tigers victorious in 1973-74 and 1980.
Carlton defeated Richmond by 27 points in the 1972 Grand Final and, when the two teams clashed in the following year's Grand Final, the Tigers were ruthless in their determination to avenge the defeat.
The 1973 Grand Final will always be remembered for two incidents, both of which severely impacted on the Blues' performance.
Early in the match, Richmond's Laurie Fowler accidentally flattened Carlton captain John Nicholls, and later, Tiger ruckman Neil Balme ran through Carlton full-back Geoff Southby.
Richmond triumphed by 30 points, but Carlton players of that era never forgot or forgave and Blues-Tigers matches over the next few years were intensely ferocious.
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